Andrew Vine: Drunken thugs are Britain's least welcome export

If, outside York Minster, there were young men throwing up in the streets. Or, on the seafront at Scarborough, parents were shielding the eyes of their children from young women inadvertently exposing themselves after passing out in the gutter.

We’d be outraged. There would be calls for the police to crack down hard. MPs would press for new measures to combat loutishness. Residents’ groups would demand action at every level to reclaim the streets for decent people.

By and large, thankfully we don’t have to put up with problems like this. But the people of some of Europe’s favourite destinations do, and it’s no surprise that they are as revolted as we would be.

And it’s a matter of national shame that the reason for this is the behaviour of British holiday-makers.

We have the unenviable distinction of being world leaders in the annual export of a brand of drunken loutishness which has grown so extreme that people whose incomes rely on tourism would rather suffer a cut in earnings than put up with it any longer.

This summer has seen the first serious backlash against the antics of British visitors since cheap package holidays first started tempting people abroad 40 years ago.

Graffiti reading “Tourists go home” has been daubed on walls in Spain, where tour buses have also been attacked.

In the Balearic Islands, the authorities are taking steps to limit the amount of holiday accommodation because resorts have been swamped by badly-behaved visitors, especially since room-sharing websites like Airbnb have brought even more people in.

In Magaluf, long notorious for the excesses of young Brits, an excruciating Facebook page has been set up to showcase pictures and videos of them staggering and collapsing, often semi-naked.

It isn’t just the Balearics. Corfu wants rid of British yobs, where police are taking a tough line with them in the resort of Kavos.

And on Crete, hotels in the town of Malia are refusing to take any more package tours for people aged 18 to 30 because residents are sick of the drunkenness, which they believe is deterring families.

It means losing the spending of 10,000 visitors a year, but the town would rather take the hit than continue sweeping the human detritus off the streets.

That is an astonishing decision for business people to take, especially in a Greek economy that remains perilously fragile and on an island dependent on tourism for its living.

Yet when Malia’s hoteliers were asked, 95 per cent favoured the ban.

And it’s the British causing the problems. The anti-tourist graffiti is all in English. It isn’t aimed at anyone else. Malia doesn’t want rid of young visitors from France, Germany or Holland because they have a great time and spend plenty of money without descending to animalistic behaviour. It’s just us.

We’re becoming pariahs, and it’s easy to see why. There is a category of British tourist who shows not the slightest degree of respect for the places, the people, or the customs when abroad.

A few weeks ago, on holiday in Portugal, I wanted the ground to swallow me up in shame because of the disgraceful behaviour of a group of my countrymen, who – naturally – were drunk.

They decided it would be fun to start wolf-whistling and shouting obscene remarks at young women taking part in a church procession to mark a saint’s day.

It was horribly boorish, and doubly offensive for being directed at people celebrating their faith on an occasion which obviously meant much to them. The police intervened, and their weary demeanour suggested that dealing with boozed-up Brits was a regular chore.

The rest of us who behave perfectly pleasantly and politely, will suffer as the result of the loutishness.

We’re going to end up paying more, for a start. The new limits placed on the amount of accommodation in the Balearics will push prices up because of simple supply and demand.

Attempting to price drunks out will have a knock-on effect for those who would not dream of causing trouble, notably families already paying through the nose during the summer school holidays.

But perhaps worse is that all British holidaymakers may well be regarded with suspicion and a degree of hostility in resorts which have had a bellyful of visitors whose idea of enjoying themselves is to get blind drunk.

How long can it be before more places start to follow the lead of Malia and the Balearics in making it clear that unless Britons behave themselves, they are not welcome? And when they do, who could blame them?